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Saturday, July 17, 2010

One way I save money on groceries is by using coupons. With coupons, I'm often able to buy brand name products cheaper than the store brand or even free. When I first started couponing, it was a bit overwhelming and took a while for me to figure out what method worked best for me.

The total cost for these groceries was 95 cents with coupons!

Regardless of what method you choose, patience is the key to couponing. To maximize the value of your coupons, it is important to pair them up with a sale. That means you don't run out and use your coupons right after you get them. Instead, you hold on to them until there's a sale on those items for which you have coupons. Searching through the ads each week and keeping track of what coupons you have can be a daunting and time consuming task. Thankfully there are plenty of online resources that do the work for you! Couponmom.com is a free site that compiles the grocery sales and matches them up with coupons for many grocery stores in the country. Simply click on "Grocery Deals" at the top of the page. Money Saving Mom is another great resource for matching coupons and sales. You can find a list of all the grocery stores she matches here. I would encourage you to browse those two websites, as they both offer tips and techniques for couponing. I will be writing about coupon organization methods at a later time.

After sales, coupons, and rebates, the total for this purchase was $1.90.

Many of the sites listed above post freebies and samples. I sign up for as many freebies and samples as I can, because 1) I get products (sometimes full-sized) for free; and 2) the samples often come with high value coupons. One piece of advice I have before signing up for freebies is to create a junk email address. Most freebies require you to give your email address, and creating a separate one just for that will prevent any junk email from filling up your normal email inbox.

I got all these freebies in my mailbox one day. 4 Wheat Thins packs, 3 Vanilla Caramel Latte packets, a coupon for a free jar of olive oil mayonnaise, and a coupon for free cream cheese.

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What's for Dinner?

When asked this question by any of her seven children, our Great Grandmother would reply, "As near to nothing as I can get." As we now have families of our own, this has become our mindset when it comes to the cost of feeding our families. Finances are limited for both of our families. However, with some time and creativity, it is easy to prepare healthy, delicious, and affordable meals at home. We're here to walk you through that process as we share some of the things we've learned from our own experiences.